A company groups customers who work together, so they share their support: everyone in a company can see and reply to the company's discussions, even private ones, and hears about them by email. If a colleague is off sick, the rest of their team can still follow up on what they reported.
Companies are for your customers. Your own support staff don't need one.
Which discussions belong to a company
A discussion becomes a company discussion when a member of the company:
- starts it,
- replies to it, or
- is added to it as a watcher.
From then on, every member of the company can see it and reply to it, and gets notified about it. A private discussion stays private to everyone else: its Permissions box says who can see it.
When you add watchers to a discussion (Add others in its sidebar), you can type a company's name to add the whole company.
Where members find their company's discussions
Members click their name at the top of your site to open their profile. Under Discussions you watch, the company's name shows all its discussions, not only their own.
You can see a company's discussions too: in your dashboard, open Discussions › Manage Companies and click View discussions beside the company.
Notifications
By default, everyone in a company gets an email about every company discussion. The company's page sets that default: in its Notifications box, Switch to "default off" means members only hear about discussions they take part in, and Switch to "default on" brings it back.
Whatever the default, each member can choose for themselves: on their profile, Account settings, then under Email notifications tick or untick "when a discussion in my company (…) is started or answered", and click Save notifications.
What members can do
Everyone in a company can rename it and invite or remove people (see Adding members to a company), so only invite people they trust. Your support staff can do the same for every company, and delete companies.
Companies depend on your plan: if Manage Companies isn't in your dashboard, see Account & Settings › Plans & Billing.